The Media Tourist

A chapter from ‘Dracula’ takes wing with a lean, mean monster out for blood on the high seas

The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Starring Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham & David Dastmalchain
Directed by André Øvredal
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Aug. 18

Everyone’s favorite vampire is back on the big screen, and this time the count is down for some real dirty work.

Dracula, the title character of British author Bram Stoker’s classic Gothic tale about the aristocratic Romanian blood sucker, has fed the voracious appetites of pop culture for more than a century, appearing in some 200 films. One of the first, director Max Schreck’s iconic German silent film Nosferatu, spooked audiences in 1922; one of the most recent, the campy Renfeld earlier this year, featured Nicholas Cage sporting the familiar fangs.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is based on a single chapter from Stoker’s Dracula, about how Drac made the fateful hop from the European mainland to London in the late 1800s by hitching a ride on the schooner Demeter. Things didn’t end well for the Demeter, as we learn on a dark and stormy night (of course!) at the very beginning of the movie.

The recovery of the captain’s day-to-day log unspools the story; think of it as the original Vampire Diaries, detailing how Dracula got onto the ship (sneaky!), lurked in the shadows and then wrecked all kinds of hellish havoc every night after the sun went down. If you think of Dracula as a dapper, seductive, cape-draped gentleman aristrocrat—as embodied cinematically by Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee—well, get ready for a reset. This Drac is a real monster, a lean, mean, gargoyle-like winged creature with a mouthful of spiked teeth and a thirst that can only be quenched with blood. No neck is safe when he’s around. He’s not an animal, exactly, but not human, either. He’s referred to as one point as a “thing that wears the skin of a man.” If you need some new fodder for your nightmares, here it is.

The captain and the crew, we find out, were slow to catch on when they on-boarded a shipment of big wooden (coffin-like) crates in Bulgaria. When things start to get messy on the Demeter, in the middle of the Mediterranean, terrible things begin to happen, they cast about for explanations. Maybe it’s God’s wrath for their sins; perhaps it’s the bad luck, or curse, of having a woman—a female “stowaway”—on board. It’s 45 minutes into the movie before anyone even brings up Dracula’s name; this is one of those movies where the audience knows long before the characters figure it out. Maybe the captain and crew should have paid more attention to all those ominous crates embossed with the crest of a snarling dragon—and, I swear, with what looks like a big, capital “D” smeared on the sides.

Norwegian director André Øvredal leans into the mood of the story—dark, dangerous and deadly—that makes the most of its soggy setting. The Demeter is damp, cramped and claustrophobic, with old wood, scampering rats and working conditions that would never pass an OSHA inspection. But to the sailors, it’s home, and now they have an uninvited guest threatening to turn their ship into a sarcophagus. It’s not the kind of place you’d want to be with a vampire on the loose, especially when Drac gets down to business. Even kids, dogs and other animals aren’t safe. This Dracula is a carnivore who doesn’t care where the next meaty meal comes from.

Corey Hawkins (from TV’s The Walking Dead and 24: Legacy) leads the cast as the ship’s Cambridge-educated man of reason. Irish actor Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) plays the seasoned, ready-to-retire captain; David Dastmalchian is his dependable first mate. Aisling Franciosi (also Game of Thrones) plays a Romanian girl already very familiar with the “thing” now threatening everyone onboard. Dracula is portrayed by Javier Botet, a Spanish actor who’s apparently found his niche playing creatures in horror films and creature features, including Slender Man, Crimson Peak, and Conjuring and Insidious flicks.   

If you’re not a Dracula buff, in general, you might not want to board this salty slog of a rampaging monster romp. But fans of the character, grown from seeds planted 120 years ago, might find it an interesting addition to the ever-expanding movie canon of the undead’s OG.

It’s a scarifying creature feature that gets grimmer, gorier, bloodier and more violent as it sails along, with the body count rising and the crew winnowed down, one by one, to a handful of desperate survivors who must make a fateful decision. (And you might have thought your Carnival Cruise went badly.) It’s basically a little B-movie about the big D, perhaps the most dependably deplorable monster in monster lore. Dracula keeps coming back, and you can never count out the count.

And as this ill-fated sea cruise reminds us, there’s still plenty of life left in this ol’ bat.

—Neil Pond